OSCOLA - dates and issue numbers missing

bmanby

Dear forums,

I have switched citations in a document from Chicago to OSCOLA, and with the switch I have lost:
- publication dates for blog posts and 'documents'
- issue numbers for journals (only volume number shown)

I also no longer have place of publication for books and reports etc - but it seems that place of publication is not included in OSCOLA style (though some publishers using OSCOLA as the basis for their style do require it).

Is there a way I can get the citations to show the dates of publication (and publisher/name of blog) for blogs and 'documents'? (Though as a work-around I have converted 'documents' into 'reports', which do show publication dates.)

It can't be right that the issue number is not shown for journal articles? The official guidance on OSCOLA (https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/oscola_4th_edn_hart_2012.pdf) indicates that issue number is only needed if page numbers don't run continuously through the entire volume, but it is far more common for page numbers to start again with each issue (and in any event easier to find the article with the issue number included).

Thanks for any help.

adamsmith

- the lack of publication date for blogposts is an error, we'll fix it.
- don't use "document" as an item type. It can't be invididually addressed by citation styles & so outputs are almost impossible to control and commonly wrong
- as you say, place of publication isn't included in OSCOLA. If journals want it, we'd need a separate style
- Not much we can do about the issue numbers. Including them for continuously paginated journals is incorrect, unfortunate as that is. See my comment here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/193509/#Comment_193509

edit: on that last point I'd very much argue that it's more common to have volumes continuously paginated, though. Certainly all article citations in OSCOLA are from journals that are.

bmanby

Many thanks for the rapid response.

- is the missing name of blog also an error, or is that supposed to be covered by the URL?

- For the issue numbers - changing the default might make sense (since the OSCOLA guidance is that it depends, and it's a lot easier to delete individually than to have to look each one up individually)?

- I'll avoid 'documents' from now on!

adamsmith

no, the missing name is the same issue as the date, the two are handled in the same codeblock that currently only applies to webpages.

damnation

I've put in a fix for this.
Can you test it? right click and save as: https://github.com/POBrien333/styles/raw/ea81491b177d22cb7fa7f062998ab9ec1add7d36/oscola.csl